(peggynoonan.com) - On Friday at the winter meeting of the Club for Growth, in Palm Beach, Fla., Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a possible contender for the GOP presidential nomination, was pressed for specifics of his foreign-policy views. Walker referred to policy professionals with whom he’d recently met, and then suggested that what is most important in foreign policy is not experience but leadership. The “most consequential foreign-policy decision” of his lifetime, he said, was President Reagan’s handling of the air traffic controller’s strike. “It sent a message not only across America, it sent a message around the world.” The message: “We wouldn’t be messed with.”

     That caused a lot of raised eyebrows. I here attempt to return them to a more relaxed state. In the 1990s, when I was researching and interviewing for my biography of Reagan, “When Character Was King,” I became more deeply aware of the facts and meaning of Reagan and the flight controllers, and I discovered an element of the story that I think had not previously come fully to light:

     It was the spring of 1981. Reagan was still a new president, and recovering from John Hinckley’s attempt to assassinate him in late March. Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis met with Reagan at Camp David to give him bad news. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or Patco, wanted to go on strike. The union’s 17,000 workers manned radar centers and air traffic control towers across the country. These were tough, high-stakes, highly demanding federal jobs. The union’s contact was up, they had been working under increasingly difficult conditions, and they wanted a big pay increase.

     Lewis told me Reagan was sympathetic: The increased pressures of the job justified a pay increase, and he offered an 11% jump—this within a context of his budget cutting. But Patco demanded a 100% increase. This would cost taxpayers an estimated $700 million. Reagan rejected it outright. He told Lewis to tell the union that he would not accept an illegal strike, nor would he negotiate a contract while a strike was on. He instructed Lewis to tell the head of the union, Robert Poli, something else: As a former union president he was the best friend they’ve ever had in the White House.

     Reagan’s tough line was not completely comfortable for him, personally or politically. He’d had little union support in the 1980 election, but Patco was one of the few that had backed him. Not many union leaders had been friendly to him, but Patco’s had. And he was a union man. he didn’t want to be seen as a Republican union buster.

     Still, Reagan believed no president could or should tolerate an illegal strike by federal employees, especially those providing a vital government service. Not only was there a law against such strikes, each member of Patco had signed a sworn affidavit agreeing not to strike.

     Talks resumed, fell apart, and by the summer 70% of the air controllers walked out.

     They had thought Reagan was bluffing. He wouldn’t fire them, they thought, because it would endanger the economy and inconvenience hundreds of thousands of passengers—and for another reason, which we’ll get to in a moment.

The walkout became a crisis.

     Reagan did what he said he would do: He refused to accept the strike and refused to resume negotiations. He called reporters to the Rose Garden and read from a handwritten statement he’d composed the night before. If the strikers did not return to work within 48 hours, they would be fired—and not rehired. The 48 hours was meant as a cooling-off period. In the meantime, Reagan made clear, nonstriking controllers and supervisory personnel would keep the skies open

     What Reagan did not speak about was an aspect of the story that had big foreign-policy implications.

     Air traffic controllers in effect controlled the skies, and American AWACS planes were patrolling those skies every day. Drew Lewis: “The issue was not only that it was an illegal strike. . . . It was also that a strike had real national-security implications—the AWACS couldn’t have gone up.” It is likely that even though the public and the press didn’t fully know of this aspect of the strike’s effects, the heads of the union did. That’s why they thought Reagan would back down. “This hasn’t come up,” said Lewis, “but the Soviets and others in the world understood the implications of the strike.”

     The administration quickly put together a flight control system composed of FAA and Defense Department personnel, and private controllers, to keep commercial traffic—and US military aircraft—in the air.

     It was an international story. The French government pressed the administration to make a deal. Britain backed Reagan. Canada’s flight controllers shut down the airport in Gander, Newfoundland, in solidarity with Patco. Lewis, with the president’s backing, told them that if they didn’t reopen within two hours the U.S. would never land there again. They reopened.

     The administration could have arrested the strike leaders but didn’t. Congressional Democrats could have used the strike for partisan advantage and didn’t, or didn’t much.

     Sen. Edward Kennedy and Lane Kirkland of the AFL CIO played helpful and constructive roles. Persuaded the administration had a case—a 100% increase was asking too much, a strike against the public safety was illegal—both kept a lot of Democrats on the Hill and in the labor movement from coming out strong against the administration.

     Lewis said there were unhelpful moments from a few of the president’s longtime supporters. Some were wealthy men who owned their own jets and didn’t want to be inconvenienced. One called Lewis and told him he was going to get him fired. Lewis called the Oval Office. “I said, ‘Mr. President, you’re going out to California soon and Justin Dart and all these guys have private planes and they’re all raising Cain with me.’ I said, ‘I hope you don’t cut my legs out from under me.’”

     Reagan, said Lewis, responded: “I‘ve never cut the legs out from anybody in my life. You let me worry about my friends, you worry about the strike.”

     When the two-day cool-off period ended, 70% of the air controllers were still out. They all lost their jobs. “We fired 11,400 traffic controllers,” said Lewis. “That’s a lot of families. . . . And the union had supported us, and it was a good union. It was very sad. We were both upset about the firing. Reagan was almost in tears that he was going to hurt those families.”

     So why was, and is, the story of Reagan and the flight controllers an important one?

     What was at issue was crucial and high-stakes. What Reagan did worked: The administration promised to keep the skies open and did. The Patco decision set the pattern for wage negotiations over the next eight years, not only for the federal government but for local and state governments. The U.S. Postal Service’s half million workers were readying to go on strike shortly after Patco walked out. They didn’t. Mayors soon observed that a new climate seemed to have taken hold in their municipal negotiations.

     Foreign governments, from friends and allies to adversaries and competitors, saw that the new president could make tough decisions, pay the price, and win the battle. The Soviets watched like everybody else. They observed how the new president handled a national-security challenge. They saw that his rhetorical toughness would be echoed in tough actions. They hadn’t known that until this point. They knew it now.

     This is why Reagan’s secretary of state George Shultz said that the Patco decision was the most important foreign-policy decision Reagan ever made.

     Everyone knew at the time that it was a domestic crisis. It wasn’t until years later that they came to appreciate that it was foreign-affairs victory.

So was Scott Walker right about the importance of Reagan and Patco?

Yes.

     But two caveats. One is that Ronald Reagan himself would never suggest, on the way to the presidency, that all you need to understand foreign policy is a good gut and leadership abilities. You need knowledge, sophistication, grasp. He’d been studying foreign affairs all his adult life. He walked into the Oval Office with a policy: We win, the Soviets lose. A talent for leadership doesn’t tell you where to go, it helps you get there. Wisdom tells you where to go.

     Second, in January Walker said that documents released by the Soviet Union proved the Soviets treated the U.S. differently after the strike. I have never heard of such documents. No one I spoke to for the book referred to them. The Washington Post has quoted former Reagan ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, saying “There is no evidence of that whatsoever.” I suspect that is correct.

     If Walker got it wrong, he should say so. Though I’m not sure it matters in any deep way. Of course the Soviets saw and understood what had happened with Reagan and the union. Of course they would factor it in. They had eyes. They didn’t have to write it down.

http://www.peggynoonan.com/walker-reagan-and-patco/

     (freedomsback.com) - Tax season is stressful enough. But if you are like countless miserable Americans trapped in the nObamacare 1095-A abyss, it’s hell on stilts on a Segway teetering over the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

     The screw-ups, incompetence and bureaucratic blame avoidance over the health insurance exchange tax forms make the healthcare.gov website fiasco look like a flawless product launch. How do I know? My family inexplicably got ensnared in the 1095-A paperwork pit. It’s a government roach motel: Taxpayers check in, but they can never check out.

     In 2013, our private high-deductible PPO from Anthem Blue Cross got canceled because of “changes from health care reform (also called the Affordable Care Act or ACA).” Millions of others like us in the individual market for health insurance — including self-employed people, small-business owners, writers, artists and home-based entrepreneurs — suffered the same fate.

     My husband reluctantly contacted Colorado’s state health insurance exchange, “Connect for Health Colorado,” just to see what our options were. Months later, we settled on purchasing a new non-nObamacare plan directly from a different private insurer, Rocky Mountain Health. The provider network is much narrower than the Anthem plan we had before the feds intervened. Our two kids’ dental care is no longer covered, and we’ve had our insurance turned down at an urgent care clinic — something that had never happened before.

Better off? Bullcrap. But wait, it gets worse.

     Somewhere along the way, the worker bees at Connect for Health Colorado dragooned us into an nObamacare exchange plan offered by Rocky Mountain Health without our knowledge or consent. (How else has the White House inflated nObamacare enrollment figures? Things that make you go “hmm.”) Last month, we received an IRS 1095-A form, which, much to our shock and chagrin, indicated that we had paid nObamacare premiums every month during 2014.

     It took hours of time on the phone and Internet to receive an explanation from Connect for Health Colorado on how exactly this happened. Here was     the government’s response, word for incomprehensible word:

     “We apologize for the delay in responding to your email. After checking your account we are showing you might have had coverage from October 2014 to June 2014. Please call the number below to speak with a Customer Service Representative if this information is incorrect.”

“Might” have had coverage? From “October 2014 to June 2014″?

     The saga continues. We were finally able to un-enroll after being auto-enrolled in the nObamacare plan. Then, after being bounced around by the state government health exchange to various voicemail dead ends and back, with hours of migraine-inducing, on-hold music in between, we were told there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the 1095-A form — which shows payment of premiums we didn’t pay to an nObamacare plan we never enrolled in and didn’t want in the first place!

     This is just one little horror story. In Minnesota, thousands are still waiting for 1095-A forms that were supposed to arrive on Jan. 31. In California, at least 800,000 taxpayers received screwed-up 1095-As. As a result, some 50,000 people filed the wrong form. Another 750,000 are being told they’ll get corrected forms this month. Hah. Good luck with that.

     The costs in time, money and anxiety to hardworking families dealing with this paperwork perdition are enormous. Unknown numbers of people are still waiting for their forms as the April 15 tax-filing deadline looms. More face the added expense and aggravation of filing amended returns through no fault of their own.

     Where’s the rest of the media — most of whom have been insulated from these problems because they get their health insurance through their employers?

     At least one other journalist smacked head first into reality. Laura Krantz, a former NPR staffer, is now a Scripps Fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Earlier this month, she found out that Connect for Health Colorado had mysteriously canceled her health and dental insurance. After four days and eight hours in nObamacare Phone Hell (OPH), she learned she had lost her insurance coverage and her tax credit — and had to redo all of her paperwork.

     Poor Krantz still believes the ultimate solution is “single payer.” But another liberal who encountered 1095-A hell has seen the light. San Francisco resident and former nObama supporter Melissa Klein exposed her ordeal with Covered California last week. The state exchange botched her 1095-A and then insisted she had never enrolled despite invoices she showed them documenting her premium payments. After hours in OPH, her case remains unresolved, and she can’t file her taxes. How is it, she wondered, that “Amazon can ship something to NYC in an hour,” but the White House and Covered California “can’t create a health care system that functions”?

     Klein concluded, better late than never: “I no longer believe that the government should mandate health care. … A great idea is just an idea if you can’t execute. And the government has proved time and time again, it can’t execute.

Feelin’ your pain, sister. Is D.C. listening?

http://freedomsback.com/michelle-malkin/obamacares-1095-a-nightmare/?utm_source=bh&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4798018

Since "moderate" Hassan Rouhani (right) became the president of Iran, the surge in executions has given Iran the world's highest death penalty rate per capita.

Given Iran's tendency to enrich uranium in secret, it may achieve nuclear breakout capability well before ten years from now.

Nor should we forget that current polls place Mahmoud Ahmadinejad close behind Hassan Rouhani for the 2017 presidential election.

An exhaustive list of genocidal threats by major Iranian politicians between 2009 and 2012 has been compiled by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. The latest threat was made on March 1 of this year.

The Islamic State and other terrorists do not represent an idealized version of normative Islam, and a number of Muslims may not even support them. But their scriptural and historical roots frankly have plenty of precedent, and far from minimal support.

Shi'i Islam is a very different belief system from Sunni Islam. Iran today resembles a medieval European state.

     When Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke from the podium of the U.S. Congress to warn of the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran, the clock was already ticking towards March 31. That is the deadline for a final agreement between the P5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) and the Iranian regime on limits to Iran's nuclear program, in return for the lifting of sanctions currently imposed on Iran.

     By now, everyone has read page upon page of commentary on what the likely consequences of such a deal may be, with a preponderance of analysts agreeing that President Barack nObama's drive to secure a resolution is likely to put Iran on a clear course to nuclear weapons capability after about ten years. Given Iran's tendency to enrich uranium in secret, they may achieve nuclear breakout capability well before ten years from now.

 Netanyahu's mission was to warn Congress about the possible ramifications of these negotiations not only for Israel, but for the entire free world. nObama's vehement opposition to Netanyahu's speech was a desperate sign of how far his political advantage now takes precedence over any concern for the danger that Iranian nuclear weapons will pose to Israel, the Middle East, Europe and even America.

     What is worrying more than anything is that the U.S. president and his allies seem not to understand, even a little, the country now working to build nuclear weapons: its culture, its religion, and its apocalyptic obsessions.

     nObama seems to think the Iranian leadership is made up of pragmatic politicians who favor an almost areligious approach to world affairs. This calculation seems based on a wished-for interpretation, which is almost secularist, of a religiously-defined and faith-inspired culture.

     The Islamic State and other terrorists do not represent an idealized vision of normative Islam, and the majority of Muslims may not even support them. But its scriptural and historical roots frankly have plenty of precedent, and far from minimal support.

     If we speak about the faith of the Iranian people, we are ignoring a few small minorities. Shi'i Islam is a very different belief system from Sunni Islam. Regrettably, it seems that neither nObama nor his advisors knows a thing about the theology, history, rituals and mechanisms of Shi'ism, its clerical system, its seminaries, its sects, or its modern manifestations. Many of these matters are very relevant to the question of whether Iran would use nuclear weapons once it had them.

     True, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is no longer the Iranian president, and the current president, Hassan Rouhani is often deemed by the west a pragmatist and a reformer, but the apocalyptic mindset is not something unique to Ahmadinejad and his followers. It has deep roots in Shi'ite belief. That -- plus raw superstition, a large measure of religious fanaticism, and a cult of martyrdom -- makes Iran the most dangerous country on the planet today.

     Put another way, if someone boasts of uncontrollable urges to slaughter everyone he considers his enemy, is it really advisable to buy him an assault rifle and a few of boxes of bullets? Imagine what he could do with a batch of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

     The expectation of the coming of a messianic figure called the Mahdi, peripheral in Sunni Islam, has always been a key feature of Shi'ism. In this belief, the war that will bring on the "End of Days" or the Apocalypse, will bring to earth the Mahdi, the "Hidden Imam," a descendent of Mohammad. Then there will be universal peace.

     The promise of mankind's liberation through a semi-divine saviour has been at the heart of the Shi'ite faith -- the faith that nObama thinks will not contemplate the use of nuclear arms. The Shi'a identify the Mahdi as the last of their twelve holy Imams, a young boy who disappeared from human sight in the year 260 (872 C.E.), lives in a state of occultation as the Hidden Imam in the celestial cities of Hurqalya and Jabulsa, and will return to earth with a sword to fight a last battle against the forces of unbelief. The form of Shi'ism that is dominant in Iran is the majority Twelver sect, which means that the living presence of the last Imam, and the promise of his return to establish a world of peace and justice, runs through the veins of all believers.

     "The Islamic government of Iran," Khalaji writes, "has turned to an apocalyptic vision that brings hope to the oppressed and portrays itself as an antidote to immoral and irreligious behaviour." (p. vii) Perhaps this is merely religious superstition that has no impact on political behaviour. But Khalaji stresses several times that Ahmadinejad was reputed to belong to a secret society that believes in the imminent return of the Hidden Imam. He informs us that "It is very difficult to know precisely what this secret society believes, but some rumours suggest it is eager to control the country's nuclear program." Later, Khalaji points out that the president "juxtaposes the preparation for the return of the Hidden Imam with the collapse of the state of Israel", and chillingly adds that "Ahmadinejad has stated that the Iranian nuclear program is running under the control of the Hidden Imam". Even if the former president is a crank, millions upon millions of Iranian Shi'is have an intense belief in the power of the Mahdi over human affairs.

     Between 1997 and 2005, the president of Iran was Mohammad Khatami, since considered as a key figure in the reform movement that sought to replace clerical rule with a more secular system. Although a cleric himself, Khatami opposed Khomeini's theory of rule by religious guardians (velayat-e faqih). Yet even in the years of his second term, 2001-2005, an enhanced yearning for the return of the Twelfth Imam was advocated through selective mosque networks and Islamic associations. That this happened under a genuine reformist, who wanted to bring about a true democracy in Iran, is of considerable importance in any analysis of what may happen under Iran's current president, Hassan Rouhani.

     Rouhani has been widely interpreted as a reformer, but the increase in hangings, strictures on veiling, and mistreatment of the Baha'i community under his presidency suggest he is a very different man from Khatami or to those belonging to the suppressed "Green Movement". Khamenei's support for Rouhani is itself indicative of his adherence to traditional norms. There is no sign of a let-up in superstition or the apocalyptic vision under his presidency.

     An important sign of the continuing appeal of extreme religious thought and behavior may be found in the growth of a major cult based around what is now a huge mosque complex on the outskirts of Qom, where the more rationalist seminary is located.

     Modern Iranian messianism is no longer the passive style of centuries past, but activist, and can lead to military action.

     Throughout the war, religious themes predominated, from calls to jihad, to imitating the events of Karbala, when the Imam Husayn was martyred ("Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala"). All dead soldiers were lauded as martyrs; even children were sent into battle carrying plastic silver "keys to paradise." The idea was that by fighting the Iraqi army in a war between truth and falsehood, Iranians would hasten the return of the Hidden Imam.

     With this sort of thinking -- the willingness to sacrifice, whatever the cost -- it is critical to remember the words of former "reformist" president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2000:

"If one day, a very important day, of course, the Islamic World will also be equipped with the weapons available to Israel now, the imperialist strategy will reach an impasse, because the employment of even one atomic bomb inside Israel will wipe it off the face of the earth, but such a bomb would only do damage to the Islamic World. It is not unreasonable to consider this possibility."

     Militant messianism is as dangerous as ever today. Expectation of the Hidden Imam and the activist struggle to bring about his advent are not only matters of pious belief. According to Mehdi Khalaji, the former Iranian cleric, apocalyptic ideas have a strong following within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij militia. He points out that Ahmadinejad's followers, who believe in the coming apocalypse, "are linked to an influential group of the IRGC that has responsibility over Iran's nuclear program." There is no reason to suppose that this group within the IRGC has abandoned its apocalyptic beliefs, or the link between them and control of nuclear arms.

     In a country sunk in economic misery, subject to a harsh system of government and justice, where young people are desperate to flee abroad to seek normal lives, where nothing works, where corruption is rife at all levels, not least among the "spiritual," it is not surprising that so many seek escape through superstition, pilgrimage, writing letters to a man who died centuries ago, and connecting their Saviour's return to military might and the conquest of the world.

     Can the world afford to give the green light for building nuclear weapons to a country that is so unstable and so close to justifying the use of such weapons by believing in the nearness of The Last Day?

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5359/iran-nuclear-theology